DAILY DOSE of BEETHOVEN (October 23, 2020)
Beethoven immersed himself in Mozart's music. He once wrote:
“I have always counted myself amongst the greatest admirers of Mozart and shall remain so until my last breath.”
We have reported before on Beethoven's remarkable childhood in Bonn. His patrons in Bonn were eager for him to become a student of Mozart, so they sent him to Vienna to meet the famous composer.
The story of their encounter was told by Otto Jahn (1813-1859), an archeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music. In his biography of Mozart he recounted the story of their meeting, which goes something like this:
In 1787, when he was 17, Beethoven left Bonn on six months' leave of absence from the court orchestra. Armed with a letter of introduction from Max Franz, (brother of Emperor Joseph II), he gained entry into Mozart's home and was ushered into the music room to meet him.
"Play something," Mozart said to Beethoven. Beethoven played the opening of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. "Not that," said Mozart. "Anybody can play that. Play something of your own." So Beethoven did.
When the young man had finished, Mozart walked into the adjoining room where his wife Constanze was entertaining friends.
"Stanzi, Stanzi," he said, pointing back into the music room, "Watch out for that boy. One day he will give the world something to talk about."
Mozart agreed to take Beethoven on as a pupil. But when Beethoven returned to his lodging, there was an urgent letter from his father telling him to return to Bonn by the next stage – his mother was seriously ill with consumption and doctors feared for her life.
Beethoven had no choice but to leave. Less than two weeks after arriving in Vienna for what promised to be a trip that would change his life, he left for Bonn without ever achieving his ambition of taking lessons with Mozart.
That is the way the story goes. Although Otto Jahn is respected for his scholarship, because he said that he got this story on "good authority", and there is no documentation of the meeting, our modern scholars deny that it ever happened. By the time Beethoven returned to Vienna in 1792, Mozart was dead, and Haydn took him on as a student.
Haydn was 60, and the world's most famous composer at the time. Teaching a 22 year old may not have been his top priority, but evidence supports that reports of animosity between them are exaggerated. Haydn even considered taking Beethoven to London with him, and helped him publish his Op. 1 Trio. Beethoven in turn, studied what he called the inimitable Masses of Haydn, and talked of how such a great man could have come from such humble origins.
OPUS 18
Between 1798 and 1800, Beethoven wrote his first string quartets, which is also a set of six compositions. To prepare himself for the effort, he composed three string trios, and copied out Mozart's String Quartet in A Major (from his quartets dedicated to Haydn) by hand, just as Mozart had done with Haydn's Symphony No. 42, roughly 28 years earlier. He is reported to have remarked:
“What Mozart might have shown the world, if only the world had been ready for him."
Here is Mozart's String Quartet in A Major, No. 5 of his quartets dedicated to Haydn.
and here is Beethoven's String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18:
Mozart's quartet in A was the model for Beethoven's. That is the most clear in the Andante movements (2nd movement in Mozart, and 3rd in Beethoven). Both are a “Theme and Variations” form, in the key of D. (In both videos, if you click on "show more", you will see the highlighted starting times of each movement.)
Even in 1801, as Op 18 was being published, Beethoven was making changes to the scores. He told the violinist Karl Amenda, "Only now am I learning how to properly write string quartets."
Like Mozart, who spoke of the "arduous labor" involved, it took Beethoven three years to complete six quartets. But what an explosion of creativity in the mere thirty years from 1771-1801, and Beethoven was just getting started!